Porridge Radio - A cathartic journey

England's Porridge Radio have made a beautiful fourth album, an intense emotional journey with an extremely cathartic ending. Dana Margolin, Georgie Stott and Sam Yardley answered a few questions by email about the making of “Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me”. 

Georgie: I've listened to it about five times since it came out. A release always gives an album a different context, because it gets listened to by everyone and not just by us anymore. It's interesting to try listening back to it from other people's perspective. Either way, I feel really proud of what we made!

It seems to me that the first and last songs are interconnected in many ways. While in "Anybody" the lyrical self relentlessly tries to reach the person it desires, in "Sick Of The Blues" a full rebirth and emancipation from suffering take place. Why did you put these two songs at opposite ends of the album?

Georgie: I think "Anybody" is the classic opening track. It was born for that role! And "Sick Of The Blues" lets you reach a release of tension at the end. Yeah, I think there's a connection there: a beginning of hope and an ending of joy and liberation. I guess that's what most people want in life too...

Dana: I also think "Anybody" had to be the opening track, while "Sick Of The Blues" had to close the record: one song to introduce what's about to happen, and one to laugh it off and say, 'well, I tried'.

Dreams, oneiric realities and an all-enveloping, inescapable fog characterize the atmosphere of "Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me". Does the liberation you sing about in the closing track also represent a therapeutic process for the psyche?

Dana: I think it at least tries to. It's a song about an attempt at healing, about taking a next step forward.

Did you design the tracklist to reproduce a constant alternation between storm and the calm that precedes/follows it?

Georgie: The tracklist was something I approached from the perspective of a live set, thinking about the audience and which songs complement each other.

Dana: I wanted the tracklist to lead you on a journey, to have a kind of narrative, a story, and that's how it turned out. But there were many other possible tracklists, and each one led to different results. It was about keeping a good flow between the songs and choosing an order that all of us in the band liked.

In your songs you often combine instrumental crescendos with a shift in vocal intensity. Do these dynamic aspects emerge while you rehearse the songs together, or do they simply follow the structure of the lyrics?

Georgie: It's both: the structures inform each other, it's a vibe that's created when you play together.

Sam: With Porridge Radio I've always tried to follow Dana's voice. The instrumental accompaniment also follows the emotional intensity.

Dan: I agree. I also try to play in a way that closely follows the emotional turns of the sung lyrics.

On this record the guitars are front and center, but there are also violins and trumpets on some songs. What were the main influences when it came to composing the arrangements and choosing which instruments to play?

Dana: We came into this record as a band made up of guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and voice, and we wanted to stay as true to that as possible; it was really something we did together, and the arrangements reflect that. The violins and trumpets came later, when we felt we needed a bit more texture.

Georgie: We wanted to be able to play as much as possible live, together in the same room, and that definitely influenced the arrangements. For the overdubs we went for warmer tones.

Birds seem to play an important role within the album. What do they mean to you? A paper swallow is also next to Dana on the album cover…

Georgie: We're all fans of birds!

Dana: It's true. We travelled a lot while I was writing. Birds and their flight were a way of making sense of departures and returns, and also of someone I loved who kept leaving and coming back.

(November 17, 2024)

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google